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The sunlight falls softly on her skin, making the fair hair on it stand out like angelic seaweed frozen in a golden beam.
He traces his fingertip on it in small circles, almost like an ice skater who never quite dares to disrupt the perfect ice with the slide of his blade; and he does not dare to disrupt the structure of her skin, of the soft spring sun that is just the right amount of warm to feel like a cat basking in it.
She makes a soft sound, and if he listens closely in his half-asleep but highly aware state he can imagine it to be the sound of a feline; or a goddess. A goddess that has deigned Hardy her presence, the golden glow; not of her skin alone but of her character, her personality, her baggage, and her dreams, and her joy, and her brilliance.
No, I need Miller, he had said once on memorable stairs when he had held the pendant in his hands. He hadn’t known back then how he needed her. Now he does.
He traces his fingers over her skin again, his lonely fingertip gets joined by a second of his hand. Two ice skaters dance on the surface, casting soft shadows on the warmed skin; and he sighs deeply.
His breath makes the curled dark hair in front of his chin flutter, and he watches the movement through his lashes, eyes nearly closed.
Everything seems like a dream. Maybe it is, he thinks, while he watches his fingers trace the curve of her shoulder blade, then her ribs, then the outline of her left breast that is pressed against his naked chest.
And she is soft; so soft on the outside everywhere Hardy can reach. But she has a core that could cut through granite.
Miller shifts her head to the other side, now facing his beard, and her eyelashes tickle when she opens them against his cheek.
“What got you all lovey-dovey,” she mutters, more a statement than a real question.
He needs a moment, then he realises he has said it aloud.
Hardy puffs out his breath, and it resembles a laugh, the only thing he manages right now, being pressed down as he is by her weight and the calmness of the late morning. It tightens his chest in all the right ways.
“Post-orgasmic state,” he murmurs, as flatly as he can. He knows it comes out as the most enamoured words; and he does not care for it.
Miller just smiles. She makes that soft sound again, and it raises the hairs in Hardy’s neck pleasantly, like an erection of love and ease, not lust and heated desire.
It is something he couldn’t imagine having before having her. He craves both now, and getting them - so shortly on the trot at that - makes him awe. He can feel it down to the tips of his teeth, this tingling feeling, and he flashes them before pressing his lips on her forehead to release the shudder of endorphins from his body and soul, pouring them into her, in the human that takes everything from him to give it back tenfold.
“That tingling again?” Miller asks cheekily at that, raising her head away from his face to blink one half-lidded eye at him.
“Aye,” he confirms, knowing it doesn’t get him anywhere to try to hide his sentiment. Not when it comes to Ellie Miller and her brilliant mind, her brilliant body above, under, or around him.
“Granite, though. Why not tungsten or chromium? Or at least steel?” she asks then.
Hardy’s fingertips stop on the sun-kissed skin of her breast, and he rolls his eyes.
“Miller,” he warns.
She just looks at him and the seconds tick by.
“Argh, alright,” Hardy snaps, “you’d cut through them, too, 'cause yer core is made out of diamond. Happy now?”
He growls when Miller’s soft curves shake with silent laughter, making her breast bump gently into his fingertips.
His eyes frown at her silhouette while his fingers continue their dance on her skin, tracing the line back upwards to her shoulder blade that is shaped almost like a wing when looking from the right angle.
“You are a soppy one, Alec,” she says and nuzzles her nose into his jaw line.
“I didn’t! I did not blurt out that last thought!” He defends sharply.
Miller scoffs. “You didn’t have to, you twat. You should know that by now. You’re not one bit enigmatic.”
Hardy feels something hot bubbling up in his throat.
“I really don’t know wh-”
She kisses him; softly, firmly, like a diamond cutting to his core, breaking and reassembling the surface of the ice he is skating on, making him feel like a cat in the rays of sunshine through open windows, raising a tingle in his scalp that surges down his spine into aching hips and thighs. It flattens the grumpy response in his throat into a calm breeze. Maybe it’s his pacemaker. He doesn’t know.
She breaks away deliberately. Her head hovers in front of him, surrounded by sunlight, creating a golden halo framing her dark locks.
Hardy draws in a breath and makes an incredibly soft sound that makes the woman in front of him, on top of him, smile.
He brings his hand up from her shoulder to stroke her temple, her scalp; and leans up to her to close the gap between them.
Hardy kisses her deeply.
She kisses him back tenfold.